This blog began through a NIFA grant for Missouri Beginning Farmers. It continues today as a way for beginning farmers to learn about new ideas and to hear about upcoming events of interest. It is maintained by Debi Kelly (kellyd@missouri.edu).

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As an Extension Associate with the University of Missouri, I work with beginning farmers, small farms, alternative agriculture and organic farming. I am also the Co-coordinator for the Missouri Sustainable Agriculture and Research (SARE) Education Professional Development Program (PDP).

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Thursday, January 22, 2015

How Your Food Gets The 'Non-GMO' Label

Demand for products that don't contain
genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, is exploding.

Now many food companies are seeking
certification for products that don't have any genetically modified
ingredients, and not just the brands popular in the health food aisle.
Even Cheerios, that
iconic cereal from General Mills, no longer contains GMOs.

"We currently are at over $8.5 billion in
annual sales of verified products," says Megan Westgate, executive
director of the Non-GMO Project,
an independent organization that verifies products.

To receive the label, a
product has to be certified as containing ingredients with less than 1 percent
genetic modification. Westgate says that's a realistic standard, while totally
GMO-free is not. She says natural foods stores began the process of defining a
standard, involving other interested players along the way, including
consumers. Now, General Mills is just one of the big food companies selling
non-GMO products.

Sales of food labeled as non-GMO ballooned to
over $3 billion in 2013, according toThe Wall Street Journal.

"Interestingly, with all of this traction
in the natural sector," Westgate says, "we're increasingly seeing
more conventional companies coming on board and having their products
verified."

But how does a company get into the non-GMO
game? It might call FoodChain ID,
a company in Fairfield, Iowa, that can shepherd a firm through the process.
It's one of the third-party auditors that certifies products for the Non-GMO
Project.

"We start looking at ingredients, and we
identify what are all the ingredients," says David Carter, FoodChain ID's
general manager. "And of course, the label itself doesn't always identify
all of those. So we need to be sure that we have a list of all the processing
aids, the carriers and all the inputs that go into a product."

Next, FoodChain ID figures out where each
ingredient and input came from. If there's honey in cookies, for example, the
company will have to show that the bees that make the honey aren't feeding near
genetically modified corn. When there's even the smallest risk that an
ingredient could contain a modified gene, DNA testing is in order.

FoodChain ID has a lab where a machine can
extract the DNA from ingredient samples in order to analyze it. If that test
finds no evidence of GMOs, the ingredient can go in the cookies. Carter says he
can barely keep up with the number of inquiries coming in from companies that
want certification.

"The demand is now very, very high, and
it has been for probably over a year in particular," Carter says.

To date, FoodChain ID says it has verified
17,000 ingredients from 10,000 suppliers in 96 countries.

It may take hundreds of dollars for some
products to get a non-GMO label, depending on how many ingredients are already
verified as being GMO-free and how many are not.

But even with the rising demand, non-GMO
products make up a small fraction of the marketplace. More than 90 percent of
corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. contains genetically modified traits. And
those two crops are ubiquitous in processed foods like packaged cookies. Still,
if the current trend continues, it seems likely that more farmers will consider
planting non-GMO crops.

Various companies sell non-GMO seeds, but they
can be more difficult to find. Plant breeder Alix Paez hopes his central Iowa
seed company, Genetic Enterprises International, can help fill that market
niche.

"We are a very small company," Paez
says, "so our strategy is to find niche markets for farmers that are
looking for non-GMO products."

Farmers pay a premium for seeds that are
genetically modified to withstand pests, or engineered to
tolerate popular herbicides, making it easier for farmers to use those
chemicals to kill weeds. Paez and his wife, Mary Jane, hope to develop seeds
than can achieve the same yields without those expensive, patented traits. This
past season, they grew test plots on a farm in Boone County, Iowa, which they
harvested this fall with an ancient red Massey Ferguson combine.

Paez studies the effectiveness of each hybrid
seed variety. It's slow and meticulous work. But the careful data collection is
key to determining whether a new, non-GMO hybrid can be competitive in the
marketplace.

If these seeds make the grade, farmers could
potentially save some money. And their grain might fetch a premium, especially
as demand for non-GMO animal feed grows.
Because the only way to end up with non-GMO certified meat is to raise animals
on non-GMO feed.

(by Amy Mayer is a reporter based
at Iowa Public Radio in Ames, Iowa. This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting
collaboration focusing on agriculture. A version of
this post originally ran on the Harvest website.)